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A STORY OF SAHEL SOUNDS

on october 15th, 2017 - interstellar records & werk02 presents the very first time screening, in austria, of the beautiful movie about the label sahel sounds. all this will happens at forum stadtpark, one of our favorite places. next to the movie, there will be a djline of florian kläger (director of a story of sahel sounds) and richie herbst (interstellar), next to a movie talk and a records booth.

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INT038 - OWL RAVE

INT 038 | LPOWL RAVE s/t

release date: december 21st, 2015

Owl Rave's debut is dark, melancholic and driven by honest simplicity.
Owl Rave use David Lynch's „Twin Peaks“ as their main reference. The album's sonic setting, especially the sound scapes, are heavily influenced by the duality between a seemingly perfect world and deep abysses. They are set in and around the sinister places of Twin Peaks: dreams, visions, brothels and run-down bars.
Straight melodies, layered atmospheres and simple beats are enveloped by shapeless drones. Horror jazz and heroin blues lose themselves inside ambient landscapes. Lyrically and musically, Owl Rave deal with themes of desire and despair, wherein the former stays unfulfilled and the latter stays omnipresent.

tracklist:/a1 wellness at one eyed jack’s/a2 searching/a3 a knife for every heart/a4 in sarah’s dreams/b1 fright car/b2 amy/b3 find me

The Owls Are Not What They Seem
Owl Rave’s self-titled LP (INTERSTELLAR RECORDS INT 038) is a set of ambient mood music and slow atmospheric songs, attempting to aspire to the condition of a soundtrack LP. It’s inspired by the David Lynch / Mark Frost TV production, Twin Peaks.
The main creator here is Gregor Huber, an Austrian drum’n’bass DJ by trade from Innsbruck, who occasionally performs as DJ Ego and as a member of Todesstern with his friend Markus Dolp; the Innsbruck scene is probably well represented on the 2011 double LP 20 Years // 20 Songs – Workstation To Workstation, which may contain an intriguing mix of garage rock and avant-garde beats. Huber is aided here by Markus Dolp (see above) on vocals, plus Antonia Steiner who was the singer with The Shirley MacLaines. The other important aspect is the visual work of Anna Ladinig; she did the cover art, but also the photographs and video elements which make Owl Rave a multi-media statement, presumably when performed live.
One is understandably cautious of any artiste claiming inspiration from the films of David Lynch; the adjective “Lynchian” has become over-used in media commentary, and in too many cases the word is lazy journalistic shorthand for anything remotely dark or taboo in its themes. But I’ll give Gregor Huber some credit here, because he’s clearly gone some way into occupying the Twin Peaks territory in a deep and personal way. The imagery and narratives of the TV series, and also the music of Angelo Badalementi, have clearly colonised his consciousness; in these weird fractured songs and this strange droney music, he is living it out, acting the roles, performing the music.
Owl Rave may not advance the ideas of Twin Peaks any further than the original, nor does it represent the work of Lynch / Frost / Badalamenti directly; but it is a strikingly personal work inspired by these sources and taken down its own twisted path of nightmarish despair. Apparently it was driven by Huber’s need to calm himself down in some way, perhaps an antidote to what I assume is the hectic life of a DJ. Released December 2015, we got a copy on 26th February 2016. (thesoundprojector.com ed pinsent)

As far as debut albums go, this initially seemed fairly promising. Heavily influenced by the “Duality of a seemingly perfect world and deep abysses”, Owl Rave unashamedly quote that they use David Lynch’s Twin Peaks as their main reference point; and it shows, sort of.
Dark, melancholic strums of guitar permeate the entirety of the release as a noir backdrop in tone to the simplistic percussion. However, this is all but destroyed come the ridiculous male vocals, such as on track two, ‘Searching’, where it feels amateurish and misplaced.
I almost forgave them for this error in judgement the moment the guitar noise of ‘A Knife For Every Heart’ kicked in; right up until the pathetic Death Metal vocals entered the frame and turned into the comedy horror, morbid tones of the title track, being spoken in doom laden fashion. If anything else I have to give them a pat on the back for inducing the uncontrollable laughter in me that followed.
Not to be completely horrible, there are moments on this album that are well thought out; the ambient noise of ‘Fright Car’, begs for an album to back it up. Key pieces of instrumentation scattered throughout, work well in a dark lounge kind of way; but are ultimately let down by a vocalist who should just learn to shut his trap.(blackaudio.wordpress.com)

More left-field releases arrive in the form of Owl Rave (Interstellar: www.interstellarrecords.at) which offers an atmospheric instrumental presentation with a distinctly soundtrack-like suite of arrangements. Low key and moody.(HiFi World)

Put on the circuit as cat.no. 038 of the Austrian imprint Interstellar Records in the second half of December 2k15 was Owl Rave's cryptically titled debut album, a seven track piece that mainly draws inspiration from David Lynch's uber-classic "Twin Peaks" as stated in the release info. And we surely can see where they're coming from with this statement as the opener "Wellness At One Eye Jacks" provides a mysterious, super misty feel unfolding on a foundation of slow Downbeat whilst a lonely guitar is telling tales of melancholia and greyscale days in dark'ish forrests and the follow-up "Searching" is providing an ethereal, yet desperate Darkwave Blues mixed up with Morricone'esque influences from his Spaghetti Western-era and vampire-like vocals from the grave. In "A Knife For Every Heart" these haunting vocals are accompanied by droning guitar distorsions and Slo-Mo Metal for the headstrong, "In Sarah's Dream" the band explores unsettling Dark Ambient spheres and the "Fright Car" is best described as Occult Industrial with Spoken Words, horrific non-human screams and nerve-wrecking amounts of static Noize - a perfect score for a horror flic like "The Horribly Slow Murdered With An Extremely Inefficient Weapon". Furthermore "Amy" seems to live in the highlands of planet DarkJazz and the final tune "Find Me" surprisingly gravitates towards lively, complex DreamPop and spaced out harmonies for a better future. Quite a fascinating debut, this is. and it surely seems like the future is bright for Owl Rave and their fans. (nitestylez.de baze.djunkiii)

Owl Rave, the brainchild of Gregor Huber, is a multimedia project which takes its primary inspiration from ‘Twin Peaks’. This may not be immediately apparent from listening to the album – reducing a multimedia concept to sound alone will always strip out some of its layers of meaning – but the sonic exploration of dualities and dreams is deeply compelling. Here, Huber is joined by Antonia Steiner and Markus Dolp on vocals, and their differing styles certainly add depth and dynamic tension to the material.
Slow, deliberate beats crunch and trudge over long, drawn-out chords which crawl, flanged and spindly to create darkly atmospheric soundscapes. Blank monotone vocals add to the all-pervading bleakness of ‘Searching’. Comparisons to ‘Faith’-era Cure stand against the claustrophobic, dense feel of the album although sonically, ‘Owl Rave’ paints from a much broader sonic palette, dragging in elements of doom and trip-hop to paint a striking scene.
Things turn for the darker and heavier on ‘A Knife for Every Heart’. Crushing power chords drone and hang in suspension while Dolp growls the lyrics menacingly. It’s grandly theatrical. ‘Fright Car’ plunges further into murky darkness, Dolp snarling like a wounded demon from deep within a rumbling sonic cavern. Dank, murky sounds resonate, booming bass tones and fiendish whispers build a doomy, sinister atmosphere. Ethereal female vocals grace the mellow closer ‘Find Me’, on which skittering beats jab through soft swathes of synth and lead toward a distant glimmer of light. (whisperinandhollerin.com christopher nosnibor)